Junior and Senior Collectors

So, I get Google alerts all the time on the collection industry, and sometimes that includes letting me know when my competitors post a job ad.  I got one yesterday for a ‘Senior Collection Agent’.
 
Titles often are empty promises for more responsibility and the not much difference in pay, and titles sometimes are used to attract a certain type of job applicant – that isn’t happening here, what’s happening is far more damaging.
 
Twenty years ago, when I was an Operations Manager for another collection agency, one of our newer hires that had come from a competitor told me to my face ‘I don’t have to do trace work, I’m a senior collector’.  I explained to him in small words that there was no such designation where he worked, but two weeks later he was overhead saying ‘that’s just a junior collector, I don’t have to help them’.
 
That’s the problem right there.
 
I guarantee you that collection notices aren’t going out to consumers from ‘Mary Jones, Junior Collector’  I also guarantee you that if they had business cards they wouldn’t have a ‘Junior’ or ‘Senior’ designation.  But these terms are being used inside agencies, still now in 2026, to create a two-tier grouping of haves and have-nots, a different set of rules for each group, a sense of entitlement and preferential treatment that creates a cultural divide that is harmful to the collection agency.
 
And how does one go from being a Junior Collector to a Senior Collector?  Is it like the Quickening in Highlander and they have to have a sword fight against another Senior Collector and defeat them?  No … likely the Junior Collector will always be the Junior Collector, because they were hired with less experience, and have no chance for advancement to a better portfolio, a better break room, or whatever the heck the agency owners think are a perk, because they are advertising to hire Senior Collectors to grab folks externally rather than training and developing their staff internally.  So not only is the division harmful, it’s an empty promise of advancement that will never come.
 
Now, I don’t believe much in titles – our business cards don’t have them for anyone, including me – we let collection team members support sales or do IT tasks, we assign projects to team members that have been with us over a decade or new folks that have been with us a couple months.  But everyone performing a collection role is expected to perform the same level of work, and have the same opportunities for new clients that come on.
 
We have a new client launching today – we asked last month at our company wide scrum retrospective meeting who wanted to be involved when the business was assigned – we got seven volunteers.  Today collection notices are going out in seven different collectors’ names, with no titles listed on the letters, and everyone gets a chance to see what they can do.
 
If your agency uses the terms ‘Junior Collector’ or ‘Senior Collector’ in your job advertising, in your internal meetings, or unofficially around the water cooler, it needs to stop – you are making employees either feel marginalized or artificially inflated, creating friction between the two groups, and you are hurting yourself.
 
Ditch the titles, let people grow in your company as they want to and are able to, and create a level playing field that gives everyone equal opportunities and treatment.
 
Got an opinion?  Are you a marginalized Junior Collector?  Are you a manager and you can’t understand why you have a rotating door of newer staff leaving?  Drop me a note, happy to offer advice and help where I can.
 
Thanks kindly,
 
Blair DeMarco-Wettlaufer
KINGSTON Data & Credit
226-946-1730
blair@kingstondc.com